


pizzicato drops

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: (mostly), F/F, Innocent Sin, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Oblivious fool she wasn’t, but sometimes, sometimes, Noriko really did think she would rather be one.





	pizzicato drops

**Author's Note:**

> i just had to
> 
> i'm glad fandom agrees that these 2 are huge lesbians so i'm rn just (thinking emoji) hm... what if i shipped them...together? rarest most random f/f possible
> 
> edit: this has spoilers for innocent sin's ending, this game might be older than my physical age but you know, fair warning

**1/** Maybe it didn’t count for much, coming from her, but Chika was kind of, sort of, really pretty. And maybe it was a given that Noriko would notice – they were classmates, after all – but it took her aback sometimes, whenever they passed each other in the halls or outside the school gates or in the washroom between classes, when she’d find Chika half-leaned over the sink, inspecting her reflection, fixing that overcomplicated hairstyle of hers in place.

 _Who in their right mind could ever stand to be so impractical?_ She would think, unfailingly, resisting the urge to tug at the ribbons tied around her own hair.

But the braids and feathers suited Chika best, to be sure; she knew no one else could pull off such audaciously loud choices in accessory so well. Noriko could imagine Chika standing between the tall industrial buildings of Kounan or Yumezaki, a singular burst of color shrouded in the gray of metal and reinforced concrete, as well as she could be seated by the window in Peace Diner, surrounded by loud conversations and tacky plastic decor, looking like she belonged nowhere else.

(Of course, Noriko’s thoughts would inevitably drift back to track, to the scheduled meetup on Wednesday, of how much of a hassle it would be to manage during practice, and how Anna had never cared much in particular for hair accessories, anyway, especially of the tacky feathery kind, so it’d just be more trouble than it was worth. The only place she belonged in was the field, in the white of her tracksuit, with the starting sound of a gunshot echoing in her eardrums. It wasn’t wrong at all, she’d thought, to not want anything else.)

And she wouldn’t go over and greet her, or smile, because she wasn’t the kind of girl who was used to paying casual attention to people who weren’t – weren’t, you know. Her big sister. Everyone knew: _Don’t bother going after her,_ they’d say, _she’s only got eyes for Anna_ , and Noriko would think to herself, pleased, _Of course I do._ Not an inch of doubt to be found in the statement at all.

Then, satisfied at the backhanded acknowledgment of where her priorities lay, she’d go back to her seat, tuning out the rest of the conversation as she pretended she hadn’t heard them whispering behind her back just then, with the slightest bite of distaste in their words, or all the other times before that, either. There wasn’t any point in caring, so she didn’t.

She could have speculated, though. She liked to think, sometimes, that they thought she was too obtuse to catch on to the rumors, the way some people hesitated to approach her. It wasn’t that she never noticed; it was that pretending otherwise was easier. Sometimes she told herself it wasn’t so bad to be underestimated. Oblivious fool she was not, but the act made for a good shield. There was something to be said about that. She never wondered if Anna thought the same of her, though.

Noriko had been in the middle of entertaining that particular train of thought when Chika looked up from the sink, and greeted offhandedly just as Noriko walked into the washroom: “Noriko-chan!” She flicked the water off from her wrist with a languid stretch of her hand, the way Noriko imagined a cat shook off dew.

“Oh, um – ” she said, and nodded lightly, “Good afternoon, Chikalin.”

She made her way into an open stall just as Chika stepped away from the mirror. As Noriko turned the corner of her eye caught the edge of Chika’s self-contented smile; a point of light aimed at nothing in particular. She felt the twitch of her fingers curling into her palm; bit a shallow indent at the inside of her cheek. And then she stepped inside.

(Oblivious fool she wasn’t, but sometimes, _sometimes_ , Noriko really did think she would rather be one.)

~

 **2/** It had been weird to think about, at first, when she thought about it at all. Chika had flung herself into Noriko’s borderline-claustrophobic orbit of interests (running, gloomy news stories proving the irredeemable nature of humanity, Anna) and pastimes (predictably, much of the same) in a manner not unlike an extraterrestrial life-form invading with questionable intent – which _would_ explain most things, in retrospect, starting with the ridiculous hair – but she hadn’t knocked anything in the process, which was rather kind of Chika, all things considered. When Noriko had started liking Anna, the older girl hadn’t been nearly as considerate: in an instant Noriko’s whole world caved to make space for her, then narrowed until she was the only one in it. She hadn’t needed to ask.

After the embarrassing encounter at the washroom all it’d taken for Noriko to regain her balance was a five-minute long episode of screaming into her pillow and the next fifty-five spent intermittently bent over her English homework or otherwise forcing her mind to space out as far as it could get as the radio in her room worked its way through scores of peppy, identical pop songs, which worked like junk food, if the principle of worthless sustenance applied to the brain.

The thing was that she liked the vapid lyrics. She’d take a ruined brain over fries anyday; she hadn’t realized how lucky her body was to have her until she’d one day spotted Chika walking out of Peace Diner working her way through a large-sized burger of indeterminate contents and all but balked. _How repugnant!_ , Noriko had thought later in her room, trying hard to distract herself from wide, bright smiles directed anywhere but her, and the fluttering hem of Chika’s pleated skirt as she’d turned, which really was an exercise in futility, all things considered.

This was no good. No good at all.

~

 **3/** She didn’t tell Anna. The convoluted mental balancing act lasted a little over a week until Noriko decided she was probably feeling guilty over it all, which she instantly dismissed as silly, even though she knew to a degree it was true.

During that time she’d kept herself busy: she ran her scheduled 400-metres religiously (and then some); she cut up more newspaper articles about arsonists and murderers and corrupt policemen and whoever else in aimless cataloguing of depravity. She listened to more bubblegum pop during her weekend jogs, apparently bent on eroding her brain further; she prepared an extra boxed lunch twice a week, sometimes thrice, out of some vague and probably unfounded worry that Anna might need the extra sustenance. She even took up rhythmic baton twirling, despite woefully lacking the hand-eye coordination needed to perform even its most basic maneuvers.

But all of it served its purpose: it kept her mind occupied. She got plenty of things done in the process.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Noriko said one day, as the late sky descended into languid hues of oranges and reds, “if I started spending time with someone else,” she caught the baton with two fumbling hands, “would that, maybe – would you be upset?” Her grip on it tightened as she realized what she’d said, as her gaze flickered over to Anna. She felt the urge to squirm.

Her big sister’s eyes narrowed, but not in displeasure; if anything she just looked confused, but even that lasted only a flicker of a moment, because Noriko knew she’d always worn her indifference with elegance, firmly, like a tiara. Noriko couldn’t even feel offended.

It was obvious just from looking. Anna was beautiful in that stoic apathetic way of hers, that made her rather impossible to approach; she was less like a person you could truly know, and more like someone you’d feel clemency from only being in the peripheral vision of. And Noriko would know that more than anyone.

Noriko supposed she’d fallen in love with that, too, just like she would anything. It was clear that Anna had never minded that part about herself. Even on her best days she shook off singing praises and whispers of victory like a bothersome second skin, withdrawing into herself and the stretching shadows casted by streetlights as they made their down the street leading home after practice, parting in vaguely companionable silence at the second intersection. Anna only sometimes waved back, her mouth a line, the wan yellow light catching the deep blue of her eyes, but it always took a moment or two before Noriko’s heartrate steadied, before she could turn around and make her way home.

It wasn’t resentment, not really. She hoped not. She couldn’t even imagine it.

“I’d be pleased,” Anna said, “I thought you told me you didn’t have any other friends?” A brief wry smile crept up her face. On whose expense it was, Noriko couldn’t tell.

“That’s what makes it hypothetical,” Noriko said, sidestepping the unstated _if I counted as a friend,_ and made a show of puffing out her cheeks, all mock offense, but her voice flattened as she said, “You know you’re the only one for me.” Her eyes were trained to the ground, and her chin was tucked; she supposed her shamelessness had limits too. The slowly setting sun casted a burning light onto her cheeks. Then she looked back up, her words frantic: “I was just… thinking. It’s nothing. Don’t mind me, you know I get like this sometimes.”

She’d forgotten about her hands, the baton, and it slipped from her grip, clattering on the asphalt as her startled fingers twitched at empty air. As she bent to pick it up, the length of her bangs curtaining her eyes, she realized she’d done a very good job so far of not thinking why she was doing all this in the first place. She felt herself still, as though she’d been splashed with cold water, then stood up.

For a moment Anna looked like she had wanted to say something, like she’d noticed the lapse in composure – but only for a moment. That look in her eyes could have been pity, maybe.

They lapsed into characteristic quiet the rest of the way home. The air grew steadily chillier, and with it, the silence stretching between them. At the familiar second intersection where they separated Noriko watched her big sister’s silhouette slip away into the distance, the opposite direction, and she smiled and waved, and thought distantly back to silly love songs for girls who liked boys who won’t look back at them, how she’d laughed airily to their bubbly tunes that spoke of chocolates and love letters and the inevitable tear-stained heartbreak; how she’d sung along to them anyway, all the happier knowing that those words meant nothing, never, not to her.

~

 **4/** Chika was pretty, no kind-ofs about it. She was indifferent too, in her way, Noriko realized it now, that it was the first thing she must’ve zeroed in on, the first time she’d noticed her. She was indifferent and she stood out and she was pretty, and she was nothing like Anna, who kept everyone at arms’ length and looked perpetually isolated within the shroud of Noriko’s companionship. Chika was nothing like her, at least where it counted, and in the end that was probably what had counted the most for Noriko.

Noriko settled on this conclusion several months later, after. There had been a lot of _after_ s: after the car accident, the awkward hospital visits, the lengthy leave of absence that stretched beyond reasonability and her capability for optimistic doubt – the arguments, the frustration – _you don’t have to keep ruining yourself like this;_ _why won’t you listen_ ; _it isn’t the end_ – the repeated visits to Anna’s permanently-vacant household that yielded no results besides furthering the feeling of helplessness chiseling at her heart. Above all, after she’d acknowledged it, after all that had happened in between, she felt stupid – stupid, and so powerless.

_Did you hear what happened to her? Wasn’t it terrible?_

_Such a shame; she was so promising, too. To have all that taken away from you… I can’t imagine._

_What about that girl? The one who’s always hanging around Anna?_

_I heard, too. She was devastated. Didn’t know what to do with herself at all._

It was Chika of all people who’d found her, bent over the sink, gaze averted from her reflection, her bangs wet with the cold water she’d been splashing on her face for the past half-minute. She’d skipped the class before, the first one after lunch. It was funny, kind of, because Noriko hadn’t even been crying; her eyes were tired and her cheeks were red, but she wasn’t crying. She’d wanted to, maybe, but by now she’d lost the energy for even that.

She wasn’t crying, but Chika could tell she wasn’t alright, even when Noriko broke eye contact and hurriedly trained her gaze to her shoes, which gave her absolutely no consolation to speak of. How wasteful. How stupid. Anyone could tell she wasn’t worth the attention.

“Noriko-chan!” Chika said as she neared, sounding genuine in her stranger’s concern. Her hands hovered just over Noriko’s shoulders, hesitant to clamp around them, even as they shook. They didn’t know each other very well, after all. “I didn’t see you in the afternoon class, I thought you got sick…” Hesitatingly, watching Noriko’s frozen expression, she looked increasingly distressed. “Should I get the nurse? Or, um, I’m sorry – do you need something else? Anything?”

“I’m – fine,” staggered Noriko, taking in a deep breath, “I’m fine.” She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve; they were dry, still. That counted for something.

“Would you like to talk about it, at least?”

“The bell’s about to ring, though,” Noriko replied. “You were about to go to class after this, right? But I don’t think – that I can go back like this.”

Chika’s expression shuttered. The smile that rose to her face looked nothing like the one Noriko remembered from back then – bright and transient, like air bubbles floating up to the surface of her pool of thoughts. It looked, she thought, a little bit like a mirror of her own feelings. It made something in her chest tighten then, pulling taut like a thin string, almost painfully. Now she really did feel like she could cry.

“It’s okay,” Chika said, softly. “I wasn’t planning to.”

“Oh,” said Noriko, as the sound of the bell rang distantly in the hallway outside, and that was that.

~

 **5/** Chika’s usual haunt was Peace Diner, but at Noriko’s steadfast and loud refusal to go anywhere near a place with _that_ amount of grease suffusing the air – “You don’t understand, that stuff’s bad for you! How do you stand to be there literally all the time when _I_ feel like I’ll catch something from just standing there?!” – they’d taken the bus to Aoba instead, snagging a table near the window at Johnny Rogers. Noriko didn’t care much for the decor, but when she picked up the menu and skimmed the choices she felt pleased at the upgrade in nutritional quality, however slight, and huffed in satisfaction. At least, she thought, this place smelled much less like oil and MSG.

The weather was getting colder, but she was overdressed in her muffler and coat; as she looked past the menu in her hand at Chika seated opposite her, at how the soft lighting reflected off the wood and casted a warm hue onto her face, she tried her best to curb the unreasonable expectation that Chika would smile wryly and comment with precise dryness at her lackluster choice in clothing, that she would have looked annoyed at Noriko’s fretting and fidgeting all the way to the restaurant, that she would have been cold towards her in any manner at all – tried to curb the thought that couldn’t help but eat at her, that she liked Chika, she really did, but, hadn’t she always wanted to do something like this with her big sister?

 _How unfair_ , a part of her thought, already egged on. She wondered, vaguely, if it really was too late to hope; if things with Anna would never go back to how they’d been, before.

But this was neither the time nor place for such gloomy thoughts. It was Noriko, after all, who’d been the forward one to even out Chika’s own initiative from several days ago; her, who’d sidled up to Chika during the hallway rush after classes let out and let _thank you_ slip out of her, grateful and unbidden; and who’d seized her hand when she’d told Noriko that when the foreign girl from the grade above theirs had started telling everyone in the vicinity that she was going out with the tall, aloof guy from class 3-B, Chika had felt something inside her well up then, had felt sick and sad and angry at herself without even knowing why, because it wasn’t like – it wasn’t like she ever had any chance anyway, right? It was always just a silly crush.

“Chikalin’s just being stubborn,” she’d said, seated beside Noriko at the bottom of the empty stairwell, her chin caught in her hands. She offered that frail smile of hers, “I know, I know, I’ll be fine. It’s nothing like what you’re going through,” and clapped Noriko’s back gently, no more than a slight encouraging push. “I tried talking to her a few times. Maybe she thought I was weird, or something.”

 _I wouldn’t,_ Noriko had thought, _I thought it was admirable that you seemed to be so confident_ , at the same time her mouth had gotten ahead of herself and burst out, an abrupt sequence of jigsawed words, “We should go out! Um, out _somewhere_ , I mean. During the weekend! As friends.”

And Chika had flushed, thrown her head back in laughter, and said, startlingly lacking in hesitation, “Sure.”

Noriko set down the menu. The memory, still fresh, faded to the back of her mind.

“You know – sorry if this is a bit blunt,” she winced, “but I always kind of thought you had lots of people to hang out with. You’re in the school paper, right? Doesn’t that lead to a lot of networking, or something?”

“Oh, I know _of_ people, that’s all,” was all Chika had to say in response, flippant, and Noriko wanted to press on more, forgetting herself, but. But she noticed how the look in Chika’s eyes had a barely noticeable edge of bitterness to it, like hiding it had become habit, and so she didn’t ask, out of politeness or perhaps unease, even if there was the chance that if Chika explained it, Noriko would understand. She liked to think she would. “I think I’ll have the apple pie,” she told the waiter with a smile, “and tea, please.”

Noriko drained her vegetable juice as Chika dug her fork in, scraping the warm crust. They talked mindlessly for a while, like friends would, about things that didn’t matter, and it felt to her like she was getting a taste of what she’d been missing the whole time, in her single-minded pursuit of her big sister’s attention, her persistent climbing after her. The tender memories ached, but for once she let it, swallowing the pang of hurt as she did the rest of her food.

“I think that Lisa was trying to start a rumor,” Chika said, stirring more sugar into her tea (Noriko winced, but said nothing). “Maybe she thought if enough people spread word they were together, it would really come true.”

Noriko leaned further across the table. “What makes you think that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well,” she shrugged, looking as though she’d expected a more drastic reaction, “Chikalin would know. There’s a precedent, after all.” She sipped at her drink, gazed down at her half-empty cup. “I’ve seen similar things happen more and more often lately. I guess they looked good enough together – rumors need plausibility, and she took advantage of that.” She let out the familiar sigh of a defeated contender. (Noriko had been in that position several times over.) “I guess I’m saying this because I don’t get it. Even if rumors really were guaranteed to come true … if I had to borrow that kind of power to get someone to like me back, I’d wonder if it was worth it. I wonder if _she_ thought it was worth it.”

“Sorry,” Chika said, smiling gently at Noriko’s plain lack of response. There was a hint of pink to her cheeks. “Don’t pay me any mind, it’s the jealousy talking. But, you’re the person I felt sure wouldn’t look at me weird for saying all that, so thanks – it felt kind of nice to let that out, actually. I never knew.”

Noriko, thinking of admitting how lost she’d felt when Anna had turned her back on her, when she’d disappeared, how Chika had reached to rub soothing circles against her back as Noriko struggled to let out the rest of her tears, only had one thing to say.

“Yeah,” she said, and laid her hand over the other girl’s on the table, “me, too.”

~

~

~

 **?/** “I wonder if I’ll ever see her again,” Chika said, slumped against the side of her bed, her back pressed against the wooden frame. Outside the air stunk of danger and chaos and wayward monsters; the light filtering in the open slit between the pallid curtains shone an alien shade of red, the shade of sunset infinitely saturated, dulling the blue of her hair, the feathers she insisted on pinning to it out of habit despite the world crumbling around them more with each passing day. Noriko thought they looked so pretty, that they still suited no one else, even now. The sun hadn’t looked normal looking up from the ground for weeks. “She couldn’t have just – I never got to say that…”

“Don’t say that,” Noriko said, joining to sit beside her on the yellow carpet, shoulder-to-shoulder. She reached into the space between them to press her hand against her cheek. She didn’t think of the aimless afternoons spent sprawled across this very same floor, the rain beating outside, Chika’s face buried in a magazine spread as beside her Noriko untangled the last of her grievances, her regrets, her uncertainties, a sense of liberation to be found in shredding the emotions to tiny messy bits, like paper ribbons. “Gloomy thoughts don’t suit you. It never did. You’ll make _me_ sad, too. Come on, it hurts to look at you like this.”

“Are you going to keep waiting for her?” Chika murmured, then, leaning into Noriko’s shoulder as she turned, and she let her, her arm curling around her back to pull her into a hug, awkward and loose as it was. They both just felt so tired. “I’m sorry. I’m just – it’s just so scary sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Noriko said, resolute. The last time she’d seen Anna she’d promised herself not to cry, that she’d believe in her, and in herself. She could at least do that much. “I believe in her. Of course I will. I know she’ll come back. Do you?” she questioned.

“I try to.” Her smile was wan and small and didn’t belong to her at all.

“That’s good.” A stray breeze blew in, fluttering the tips of her ribbons; they splayed onto her open palm, reminding her of a time when things had felt so certain, so straightforward, so easy. When the worst things in the world were skipping class and an unrequited love. It was gone now. You couldn’t live on memories alone. That time was gone now, and time was pitiless. It kept moving forward, invisibly, with certainty. She felt her cheeks heat up as she sighed, “It’ll be easier if we do it together. S-So, I’ll believe in you, too, Chikalin. Promise me you’re not going to give up.”

“You think I’d ever?” Her laughter shivered with mirthlessness, but not from a lack of hope. Chika’s eyes looked bright. “Of course I won’t. I know I’m not alone. I have you, after all. We can both wait together,” she echoed.

“We’ll welcome them when they come back,” Noriko said, and squeezed her hand. “When everything’s fixed.”

Chika squeezed back, and, for a while, neither of them let go. And, though she didn’t say it, for a while it almost felt alright.


End file.
